Bridget has rarely been on the money. It's an investment...

Bridget has rarely been on the money. It's an investment banker's pitch to the market to see if they can get any traction.

I can understand the motivation from Evolution. With Newcrest shortly coming off of the ASX (takeover by Newmont), and Evolution somewhat being left behind in the global consolidation of gold miners, it would fill a nice void as the premium gold company on the ASX. Long term quality cash generating assets are rare like Gruyere, and Evolution has substantial debt from its recent acquisitions and capital investments at its mines (and future guidance of A$600m per year for the next 3 years (A$1,800 total) is a big number. Debt of currently around A$2 billion.

I'd struggle to see the logic for Evolution acquiring De Grey with Evolution's debt and capital expenditure - not sure they could afford to take it on (unless had Gold Road's interest in Gruyere as well). Add in I think De Grey is overvalued - well promoted but undeliverable on capital cost and operating cost (and I don't think it will start construction for some time - heritage act, safeguard mechanism, biodiversity all make new projects very, very hard to permit and gold is not a critical mineral, so no leniency on that front).

Regardless, I think Gold Road should look at a combination with Evolution - premium needs to be right but GOR has drifted nowhere and no other immediate logical combination other than De Grey, but I can't see it getting done, except at some price which doesn't make sense to GOR shareholders - see comments above on De Grey being overvalued). Capricorn is probably the other one but again priced too high for my liking.

On a final note - wouldn't Evolution Mining and Gold Fields make more sense - Gold Fields just lost out on a major merger with Yamana. I found this chart interesting in Evolution's investor day presentation - Agnew, Granny Smith, St Ives and Gruyere all owned/managed by Gold Fields...may be I should be emailing Bridget